Victory205

Like you, I get such a kick out of these naive content nagging threads that permeate all gamer interaction sites. One thing I’ve never seen, is an effort to raise the cash to pay a developer team to make something happen. Come up with a couple hundred thousand Euros for starters, you’ll get your Tornado. Show me the money.

I finally got the slats working, and yes, they are way off schedule as A4K mentioned. Now that you mentioned it, the T did suffer from directional instability, and would tail wag in turbulence. It was completely restrained to yaw, no roll coupling. The slats are where we need to begin. They seem to be airspeed driven instead of AOA, and until that is on schedule, the rest is going to be problematic. There is too much pitch/AOA sensitivity to airspeed changes in the landing config, and far too much speedbrake drag. Gear drag seems a bit low, but looking at idle descent rates, it appears that overall drag even with speed brakes retracted is a excessive. The landing config is more challenging than it needs to be. Did you head over to discord?

Afterburner FF isn’t measured. At high alt it’s ~ 500 ppm, medium 1000 ppm, low 2000 pounds per minute.

In order to achieve proper behavior in the rest of the envelope, the extreme high alpha characteristics haven't been completely implemented yet, it's coming. That's where Roll SAS exacerbates departure tendencies, and why it was deactivated before maneuvering flight.

And, if the period missiles are modeled, you’re going to finally learn to maneuver to the rear quarter for sidewinder employment. No more roll to put the lift vector on, put your feet on the instrument panel, and pull until you can get an AIM9L/M face shot. Additionally, the F4J won’t have a gun! It’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch.

Nah, it’s just an act. I wrote the previous missive for referral in the future. The sim community constantly engages in arguments based on nonsense that didn’t exist in real life, then spends an enormous amount of time fighting amongst themselves over irrelevant issues. The whole missile drama, where no sim enthusiast has the background or access to understand the truth. It’s bizarre from where I sit to see people who have never seen an AIM54 in real life, want to argue over whether the AIM54 actually worked against fighter sized maneuvering targets, something that wasn’t remotely controversial to real crews. There is a reason very few real pilots or RIO’s bother to participate unless they have a book or podcast to peddle.

Congrats on your 80th, you are just getting warmed up. More Naval Aviators around here is a wonderful thing…

Yes, but the ingresses were done a medium altitude, and trust me, most were agonizingly predictable. To include the USAF you’d have to include exactly what you mentioned. To do Navy only, then you could do from Danang/Chu Lai northward, and enough to get the famous trail to the west. It all adds up to an enormous undertaking. If you don’t have the financial resources upfront to pay an established developer, then a convoluted option would be to put together a complex network of aircraft developers and make an agreement to do the map for a percentage of sales. You’d need to convince the existing period aircraft (which includes ED assets), and probably new modules like F105, Mig17, A6, F8, A7, A4 (pay version), Cobra, etc. that they have an interest in chipping in for a SEA map. It gets unwieldy and untenable pretty quick. Of course it wold be all worth it if it meant that an F8F Bearcat module would appear as part of the Dien Ben Phu campaign.

You might be overreacting to the perceived level of “conflict” at work here. As I have written, the performance data is estimated based on flight test, and the key point, explained over and over, is that the EM and specific energy charts are meant to be useful for general aircraft comparison so a warfighter has an idea of where advantages and disadvantages reside. When that is distorted for whatever reason, and causes inordinate disruption and dissuades customers from using or enjoying the module, it has to be addressed. No one in the fleet confirmed what what in those charts. When I was loaded for bear and in a configuration that is depicted, I was on a mission that didn’t have the luxury of wasting the fuel or time to do a performance comparison. Same with level acceleration data. No Fleet F14 pilot quoting the max speeds you see bandied about, performed that speed run in level flight as depicted in the acceleration charts. It was always done by unloading to a half G from a higher altitude, often on PMCF flights. Similar considerations exist for other combat performance benchmarks. There isn’t time or fuel to spend or incentive to do so while scribbling down times. The crews knew what the aircraft would do in typical employment. There are data points that exist in the subsonic, normal flight regimes that were provided and implemented by the talented Heatblur programmer. Those are benchmarks like descent and climb rates in certain configurations that were performed as part of a normal mission. Mil power climbs, cruise speeds vs fuel flow, etc. I’ve tried to lend perspective to what is reasonable and most people understand the limitations involved, and where we are coming from. Given the different approaches of different developers, there will never be a valid balance between dissimilar aircraft. Too many variables and divergent attitudes. I can say with confidence that Heatblur has always pushed to get performance right without embellishment. If you desire to display your ACM prowess in a desktop flight simulator, then it needs to be done in the same aircraft with the same loadout. I am constantly asked about whether one aircraft is better than another. You’ll find that I don’t engage in those types of discussions, many of which come from people who are in arguments and want a reference with which to slay their opponent- “Well I know an F14 pilot and he said…” I’m afraid that it doesn't work that way. Too many variables to answer. What’s the mission? Where in the envelope? What variant? You guys tend to be aircraft focused, the professionals are broadly mission focused. It’s like asking what’s better, Porsche or Ferrari without context? Life is too short for that.

You would have to create your own, or commission a third party to do it. Money will be involved, or some sort of deal that makes it worthwhile as a pro bono endeavor. Percentage of increased sales on period aircraft, ground assets, development of new assets, missions, etc. Sure seems easy from the peanut gallery.

Not much chance of SEA happening for a long time now that @LanceCriminal86 got everyone thrown in Hack by @BIGNEWY. This is part of why I encouraged you gents to take a look at making the map for yourself. Just performing a cursory, back of the envelope analysis, @Tengu has illustrated the technical challenges that anyone who takes on this project faces. It's easy to sit on your arse and demand things, without bothering to analyze the costs involved. My guess is that this map would end up being a labor of love without regard to financial efficacy. Another aspect is that Viet Nam is not that interesting geographically. It's restricted as our strike planners (even more constrained by politicians) found out by China to the north, relatively flat terrain to the east of high value targets, and medium terrain to the west that makes options somewhat predictable. The "mountains" are what most would call hills, 8-1200 meters, and they are a long way from places like Hanoi, Haiphong, setting up a 15-20 run in without masking. It gets pretty predictable unless you are able to create a very large map that covers Western Viet Nam, Laos, etc, despite the difficulties that @Tengu listed.

Well if he said that and it wasn't a good natured jest, then I find it pretty dismissive of a lot of bright, talented aviators, especially coming from a struggling reservist who often comes across as a bit of a tragic figure, don't you think? For perspective- We had four guys in my little squadron who made Admiral. Of the four, three were RIO's, all three were mentors during my tour who took me under their wing and got me squared away in squadron, airwing and ship board operations. Of those three RIO's, two made Vice Admiral, one retired as a Rear Admiral. All three commanded fighter squadrons, all three were Super CAGs. Two skippered CV's, one of the two commanded two different CV's, all of the above in wartime. Two commanded NSAWC, which is the parent command for Topgun, one commanded 3rd Fleet. A lot of Walk on Water Officers in the USN were NFO/RIO's, the only thing that kept them out of the front seat was a dumb eyesight rule that more or less disappeared in time. As far as I know, none have Youtube channels

Nooooo! Besides, I'm only disappointed in YOU, everyone else is fine. You do realize that Hummingbird is scouring the dark web, looking for the EM diagrams for the F4E? We may not see him around for months. Autopilots are typically called "George", put George in the front seat and leave Jester in the back. Someone mentioned "Sully". Think twice about that, Chesley would probably sue for royalties for use of his Name, Image or Likeness. The USAF variants had flight controls in the back seats IIRC, that might make multi player more interesting. Might be easier to find WSO's for you pilot types.

Why don't you gents pool your resources and either commission a design team to make one, or do it yourself?

Whatever the case, you're going to get 10,000 requests to change the name after Topgun...I mean, "Top GUN" Part Deux releases this year.

Happens every time, doesn't it?

My roomie throughout flight school and my most trusted friend for the past four decades flew A6E’s off of Coral Sea. Unless you like flying at 420KIAS in pitch black night or in the clouds, I can’t imagine the attraction of flying one in a sim.

I think that I can safely speak for the community by saying that we are willing to wait a couple years to get Fester (saving $5 here). Please take your time on the F4 release until everything is completely finished, including all variants and weapons, all without any bugs, no matter how big or small…

The free A4E module doesn’t fly that well right now in a number of regimes, but it does have the same type attitude indicator as the F4 in it’s AJB-3. Students did a full squirrel cage aerobatic sequence using it while flying instruments under the bag on their first flight in the TA4J in training command. Fabulous instrument, you will love it.

We levied former F4 crews $5 every time they spelled an “F” as “Ph”. Who wants to be in charge of the Phantom fine jar?

Meh, it doesn’t have glove vanes…

Battery? What battery? This thread illustrate a classic example of extrapolating off of random, out of context bits of irrelavent online flotsam, even on a simple topic like lights. On the ship at night, all external lights are turned on when ready to launch and are kept on throughout the flight until coming to a stop at the end of the arrestment. The landing light is not normally used for approach or landing at sea or ashore. The rare example of when it is used is when the weather is close to or below mins. Then LSO's will sometimes call for landing lights on, which is a somber thing to hear, because it means that you aren't likely to see the ship at minimums. It helps the LSO to see you, well before you can see the ship. Upon join up, the flight lead would go to formation lights only when the wingman got within a few wingspans during join up. The wingman left his lights on for anti collision purposes for the entire formation. The wingman's lights paint the lead well enough to fly formation. Tactically, we often turned all lights off, and just flew using moonlight if possible. Ashore in the daytime, the anticollision light was turned on before start, using external power. At night, anti collision and position lights turned on prior to start. Lights were turned off prior to shutdown. Some Air Force bases required landing lights on as part of their course rules, both to help the tower see a GIANT Navy fighter a couple miles away, or to help pilots see GIANT Navy fighters to aid in visual separation in the landing pattern. Pilots would use the taxi light to illuminate obstructions when they felt it necessary. Another technique when trying to pick out an aircraft during rendezvous was to ask for your target to "go midnight". The pilot would turn off all lights for a moment, helping the wingman to discern the correct aircraft out of a pack of blinking lights in the same area.

It’s going to be tweaked. Everyone must be patient (including me) and understand that the team is busy creating reams of RCS (Really Cool Stuff) at the moment. The buffeting (not shaking, you aren’t watching a horror film) will provide nuanced feedback in due course, just like the real aircraft.

If your body scan is ever implemented, first thing I’m gonna do is press the <Backspace> key and watch you wince.

So this means glovevanes, right?